Understanding Games

Course Overview

This course provides a comprehensive toolkit of ideas for understanding and making games. It is based on the university course, Introduction to Game Studies: Theory and Design, which is a general elective open to all students. The course is non-technical and does not teach a game engine like Unity or Unreal. However, the topics covered can be applied to the creation of both board games and video games.The first half of the course focuses on game theories and examples based on board games, as analog games have been around for thousands of years prior to the development of digital games. The course is divided into four thematic sections, which build on each other: General Principles of Game Design, Storyworlds, Game Worlds & Interfaces, Agency, and Systems. The course content is structured to support a challenge project to design a prototype board game, to solidify the learning.